"Logic itself commands you to believe in me," he said in his official manifesto. "John the Baptist was the messenger of the Alliance (which is the Scotch Covenant), and Elias was its prophet. But Malachi and Jesus promised the return of the messenger of the Alliance, and of Elias the Restorer. . . . If we are deceived, it is God who has deceived us, and that is impossible. For the office with which we are charged is held directly from God, and those who have helped us in founding our Church, and who have given us their devotion, testify that they have been instructed to do so by personal revelations."

All the believers in Dowieism affirmed that John Alexander Dowie was Elias the Second, or Elias the Third (if John the Baptist were considered to be the Second), but Dowie himself went further still. He was too modern to base his influence on religion alone, and he actually had the cleverness to become not only a banker, manufacturer, hotel-keeper, newspaper proprietor, editor and multi-millionaire, but also the principal of a college and the "boss" of a political party which acknowledged him as spiritual and temporal pope and numbered over sixty thousand adherents. He had ten tabernacles in Chicago, and ruled despotically the municipal affairs of one of the suburbs of the city.

II

It is interesting to study closely the way in which Dowie gradually attained to such a powerful position. Up to his arrival in Chicago, and even for some years after it, his career differed little from that of the ordinary open-air evangelist with long hair and vague theories, such as may be seen at the street-corners of so many English and American towns. In New South Wales his excessive ardour at temperance meetings in the public squares caused such disorder that he was twice imprisoned, and he came to the conclusion that Melbourne would offer better scope for his mission. He went there to establish a "Free Christian Tabernacle," but almost immediately an epidemic of fever broke out, and he became popular through his intrepidity in visiting the sick, whom he claimed to be able to cure by a secret remedy, the use of which, as a matter of fact, only resulted in augmenting the lists of dead. But to his religious propaganda the Australians turned a deaf ear, and after persevering for ten years he gave up, partly because the authorities had intimated that he had best pitch his camp elsewhere, partly, perhaps, because he was glad to leave what he later referred to as "that nest of antipodean vipers."

We find him in San Francisco in 1888, preaching his new religion at street-corners, and once more causing almost daily disturbances by the vigour of his eloquence. Here again his hopes miscarried, and from thenceforward he fixed his eyes on Chicago, where he should "meet the devil on his own ground."

This final resolution bore good fruit, for Chicago is pre-eminently "the city of Satan," and those who desire to wage war against him can always be sure of plentiful hauls, whatever nets they use. It is that type of American town where all is noise and animation, where the population is cosmopolitan, and confusion of tongues is coupled with an even greater confusion of beliefs; where it is possible to pursue the avocations of theologian and pork-butcher side by side, and no one is surprised. Called "Queen of the West" by some, Porkopolis (from its chief industry) by others, it is a giant unique in its own kind. While its inhabitants, in feverish activity, climb or are rushed in lifts to the nineteenth and twentieth storeys of its immense buildings, there is heard from time to time a call from regions beyond this life of incessant bustle; the voice of a preacher dominates the tumult, and this million and a half of slaughterers of sheep and oxen, jam-makers and meat-exporters, factory-hands, distillers, brewers, tanners, seekers of fortune by every possible means, suddenly remembers that it has a soul to be saved, and throws it in passing, as it were, to whoever is most dexterous in catching it. In such a milieu Dowie might indeed hope to pursue his aims with advantage.

His personality had a certain hypnotic fascination. His eloquence, his patriarchal appearance, his supposed power of curing even the most intractable diseases, his use of modern catch-words, his talent for decorating the walls of his little temple with symbols such as crutches, bandages and other trophies of "divine healing," all combined to bring him before the public eye. He had a dispute with the doctors, who accused him of practising their profession illegally, and another with the clergy, who attacked him in their sermons; the populace was stirred up against him, and laid siege to his tabernacle, and he himself threw oil upon these various fires, and became a prominent personage in the daily Press.

It is true that the arrest of some Dowieists whose zeal had carried them beyond the limits of the law of Illinois was commented upon; that long reports were published of the death of a member of the Church of Sion who had succumbed through being refused any medical attention save that of the high-priest of the sect; that much amusement was caused by the dispersal of a meeting of Dowieists by firemen, who turned the hose upon them; and much interest aroused by the legal actions brought against Dowie for having refused to give information concerning the Bank of Sion. All these affairs provided so many new "sensations." But what is of importance is to attract the public, to hold their attention, to keep them in suspense. The time came when it was necessary to produce some more original idea, to strike a really decisive blow, and so Dowie revealed to a stupefied Chicago that he was the latest incarnation of the prophet Elijah. Then while the serious Press denounced him for blasphemy, and the comic Press launched its most highly poisoned shafts of wit against him, the whole of Sion exulted in clamorous rejoicings. For the prophet knew his Chicago. Credulity gained the upper hand, and the whole city flocked to the tabernacle of Sion, desirous of beholding the new Elias at close quarters.

III

The definite organisation of Dowieism—or Sionism, as it is more usually called—dates from 1894. From this time forward Dowie ceased to be merely a shepherd offering the shelter of his fold to those desiring salvation, and, allowing evangelisation as such to take a secondary place, became the director, inspector and general overseer of a religious society founded upon community of both material and moral interests, and upon fair administration of the benefits of a commercial and industrial enterprise having many sources of revenue. In this society, political, sociological and religious views were combined, so that it offered an attractive investment for financial as well as spiritual capital. Dowie was not only the religious and temporal leader of the movement, but also the contractor for and principal beneficiary from this gigantic co-operative scheme, which combined selling and purchasing, manufacture and distribution, therapeutics, social questions and religion.